From my reading it seems as if a rather large subset of neurologist do not believe that memory is stored at all. In fact, I have a book written by a computer scientist and neurologist, intending to be a very long argument for why memory must be stored in the brain, weather by neurons or something else. I happened to read a review published in a neurology journal that was brutally dismissive of the book and near made fun of it. Despite the fact that the reviewer failed at providing any answers for logic problems outlined in the book. The reviewer even mistook a logic gate feed back structure for a dual input (the review quoted a study done that cut the “front processor” of the visual cortex to prove that a back connection also existed, I.e. the poor monkey did not lose sight until they severed both the front and back of his brain.)

The claim as I understand it is that there is no “memory” at all. What we experience as memories are simply input parameters that signal our brain to begin a particular function. In the way a neural net does not “remember” the training data but carries out what it “learned” anyway. I have problems explaining this idea as I think it is full of holes and would require some fundamental changes in how we think about feedback structures (I mean this neurologically as well as mathematical/computational).

Either way if most people don’t doubt memory storage in neurons then they are very quite about it. I’ve rarely ever read an argument for memory storage mechanisms in the brain. A good reason for this is simply the question: Where is it then? Neurons individually can’t really provide this sort of expansive data storage. And what they seem to be able to account for is too little and too widely spaced apart. Interestingly this spacing also provides a counter argument against the complex processing that would be required if there wasn’t a memory mechanism.

Personally I think the dismissal of memory comes with a lot of hubris attached, as well as a total lack of understanding information theory. Information theory itself seems to be popularly bemoaned by neuroscientist as well. But it’s hard to see the alternative and is a bit paradoxical since the only way I can seem to understand the “no memory” claim is by using a computer neural net metaphor.